Maxim Jakubowski - The Mammoth Book of the Adventures of Professor Moriarty

I felt the strike of Lord Kennington’s cane across my shoulders and turned to see the deep hatred in his eyes. I knew from that moment on that the world would never be the same. I was banished from the house.

Soon a letter arrived from Eleanor’s only cousin, Richard, who had long been a familiar presence in Kennington House. For such a brusque man, he took care to deliver the blow with some kindness. Eleanor had instructed him to implore me to douse my desire and, to save her from shame, to promise never to meet her again. My heart was broken, but I made that promise and I have kept it ever since.

Tonight, when I stood on that pavement in Berkeley Square, I wondered if she was looking at that windmill, thinking of me.

Professor Moriarty is a conundrum. He decreed that we should delve into the darkness of the mind, but it has become clear that for him the mind is an intellectual and not an emotional property. To cure his insomnia I must seek out the root of the disturbance, to unearth some event from the past that first triggered the imbalance. Yet he resists memory. I attempt to make him reveal episodes of darkness and guilt, but in return he elucidates a theory that guilt can only come from regret and he has none. He talks of Malthus, the English scholar, and says that darkness must necessarily exist. For fear that the Earth cannot cope with the load of mankind, the population is naturally repressed, being kept equal to the means of subsistence by misery and vice. Therefore, he said in his cold, sober voice, how can one feel guilty about committing a crime?

I despair. I see only one way forward to recover the dark, troubled memories that sit at the heart of his condition: hypnosis. Only then will I uncover the truth of the man.

Richard Kennington has responded to my letter informing him of my new practice. My dear cousin, as I call him even though we are not related by blood, has continued to be my one strand of communication since Lord Kennington and Eleanor turned their backs on me. It was he who informed me of the death of Lord Kennington, and that no provision for either of us had been made in the will: the entire fortune was left to Eleanor. I had expected as much, but Richard, as the only other living Kennington, felt due some level of fortune. In truth, the good Lord had long been appalled by his sometimes foolhardy gambling.

The words in Richard’s latest letter conveyed a new unhappiness to my own troubled soul. Eleanor is to marry a marquess of whom I know nothing at all. A cold wave swept through me and I had to steady myself as I read the missive. Her extraordinary wealth had made inevitable marriage to some esteemed yet impoverished aristocrat, but before I read those words there was just a sliver of a chance that one day … What a miserable fool I am!

I am ashamed to say that I have been standing in the dark on Berkeley Square again, staring up at the lit windows like a desperate voyeur.

When I returned home, a plump fellow was standing in the yard. It was clear that he was in a state of high agitation, tapping his cane upon the ground, fiddling with the brim of his hat and checking his pocket watch, all within the few seconds it took to notice me walking towards him.

“Are you the good doctor?” he said in a peculiar, high-pitched voice.

“Dr Trevelyan Blake. Is there some sort of emergency?”

“Yes. No. Well, yes there is.”

“Where is the emergency?”

“It’s here, Doctor, standing before you.”

Within a minute, he was sitting wedged into the armchair of my room, his long, ginger mutton chops quivering with agitation, his belly testing the buttons of his colourful striped waistcoat and his top hat squashed down on his collar-length, virulent orange hair.

“May I take your hat, Mr … ?”

“Goodness me, no.” He touched the brim again. “One never knows what might fall from above.” He laughed nervously throughout the sentence. “Smithington Smythe.” He proffered his card.

“How can I help you, Mr Smythe?”

“Ah yes, yes.” He started searching the pockets of his waistcoat and jacket in a flurry of commotion and finally produced a small cutting from a newspaper. “It says here that you offer treatment for uneasiness of the mind. Private and confidential. Yes, yes?”

I offered affirmation. He then stuttered and sweated his way through an explanation of his ailment, intermittingly singing snippets of what appeared to be that irrepressible ditty “The Flowers that Bloom in the Spring” as he did so. I abhor The Mikado but a man should not be condemned solely upon his taste in music.

“‘Uneasiness of the mind.’ That’s exactly what my wife says I have. I have a young grandchild, a beautiful little girl, and there’s so much danger, Doctor – rogues and vagabonds, carriages in the street, runaway horses, sharp knives at the dining table, rivers to drown in, uneven paving stones to trip over, masonry falling from the sky. The world is full of danger, Doctor. My wife says I am imagining it all and upsetting everybody, not least my little grandchild, who has picked up my agitation and screams every time she sees me. Please, Doctor, I beg you to help me to stop imagining all this evil.”

He then made a strange request that he would come to me in the later evening at ten of the clock every Tuesday. He was indisposed at a more suitable time due to his important business in the shipping industry and his wish to spend the early evenings with his family. In exchange, he would offer me treble my fee, as long as I felt that I really could cure him.

I gave him my assurance that I could and he seemed much cheered. And, what is more, I truly believe that I can help him. As he left, he seemed much taller than I had realized on first impression: such is the power of the mind over the physical being, he had seemed to grow inches upon my assurance.

A second patient then. I will have enough to cover my weekly rent and to eat well. If a third patient emerges, perhaps I will even be able to purchase a picture to adorn these bare walls.

It has been a momentous morning, one that will be forever seared into my consciousness. I have broken through the barrier – indeed, I have smashed it to smithereens – but the land behind that barrier proved to be dark and terrible. I wish I had never glimpsed its horrors.

Already aware of the work of the great Mesmer, I became a devotee of John Baird’s researches into hypnotism while I undertook my medical learning in Edinburgh. Then, in Paris, Sigmund and I discussed hypnotism at great length and I became the master of self-hypnotism. I felt sure that I could use hypnosis to help any patient recover the occluded memories of events that had caused a disturbance of the mind.

With his resolute refusal to discuss his darker memories, I had decided that Professor Moriarty should be the beneficiary of my first foray into the hypnotism of a patient. Yet, as I fingered my gold pocket watch and studied his severe, angular face, his high-domed forehead and stony countenance, I faltered. Never in my life had I encountered such a fiercely intelligent and obdurate gentleman, one who was hardly going to allow himself to be put under another’s spell.

However, to my surprise, he leaned forward and said, with that curious small smirk upon his almost lipless mouth, “Stop playing, boy, and do whatever it is you feel you must do.”

I arranged proceedings so that we were sitting opposite each other and I carefully followed Baird’s process. I held the pocket watch a fixed distance from the professor and asked him to stare intently at it. Five minutes of complete stillness and silence passed, but there was no change in the professor’s demeanour. He stared fixedly, barely blinking, but the light of keen, conscious intelligence never left his deep-set eyes.